25 years ago: Planners denounce three suburban mall proposals

The city's planning staff today recommended denying three large mall rezoning requests which would be up for initial consideration in the first week of October. The three potential sites were at the northwest corner of U.S. Highway 40 and Wakarusa Drive, the southeast corner of Clinton Parkway and Wakarusa Drive, and the southeast corner of Iowa Street and Armstrong Road. Only the latter site was within the 1987 city limits. Maintaining that the city's plans still designated downtown as the regional commercial center of Lawrence, staff members pointed out that long-range plans for Sixth and Wakarusa recommended a "community shopping center" between 10 and 30 acres, not a mall of 55 acres. The Clinton Parkway and Wakarusa site was opposed for similar reasons, with future plans for that area including residential developments with limited commercial "nodes" at major intersection, rather than the 500,000-square-foot mall proposed by the developers. Clinton Parkway, planners said, had been designed to avoid the type of commercial strip development that had occurred further east on 23rd Street. The original "cornfield mall" site proposed on 61.4 acres at Iowa and Armstrong was opposed by planners not only because it would harm downtown businesses but also because part of it was in a floodplain and possibly in a wetland area -- the kind of land that was already causing plenty of controversy in the South Lawrence Trafficway debate.